Friday, December 16, 2011

Chronic fatigue syndrome scientist finds a new home

Judy Mikovits is taking her work on the road. The embattled chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) researcher will conduct her arm of a US National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Disease (NIAID) sponsored study on the condition’s link to certain retroviruses at another US government laboratory, the scientist overseeing the study toldNaturetoday.

W. Ian Lipkin, director of the Center for Infection & Immunity at Columbia University in New York, says that Mikovits will team up with her former mentor Frank Ruscetti at his laboratory at the US National Cancer Institute (NCI) in Frederick, Maryland. They are one of three groups testing dozens of blinded blood samples from CFS patients and healthy controls for XMRV and related retroviruses.

Mikovits had been slated to perform the study while at the Whittemore-Peterson Institute for Neuro-Immune Disorders (WPI) in Reno, Nevada. But she was fired from her job in September for not sharing a cell line with another scientist there. She was arrested in California last month and charged in Nevada with possessing stolen lab notebooks and other materials that belonged to WPI. She also faces a civil suit in connection to the materials, some of which have since been returned to WPI (read ‘Embattled scientist in theft probe’for more details).

Mikovits and Ruscetti collaborated on a 2009Sciencepaper that suggested that CFS patients were far likelier to be infected with XMRV than healthy people.

After numerous labs failed to find the virus, NIAID tapped Lipkin last year to lead a multi-centre study examining the link. The ‘Lipkin study’ involves Mikovits and Ruscetti, researchers at NIH and the US Food and Drug Administration who identified sequences of viruses related to XMRV in CFS patients, and a team at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that has been unable to find any trace of XMRV (for a run-down of the entire episode see our story ‘Fighting for a cause‘).

“[WPI] are no longer involved because the whole point was to have Mikovits try to reproduce her work, and having someone else at the institute do so wouldn’t address the questions,” Lipkin says.“It’s critical that she do the work. She doesn’t have a lab at present, so it’s going to be done at NCI.”

Lipkin had initially hoped to have the study done by the end of this year, but he now says that only about half the samples are ready to send to researchers. He plans to meet with Ruscetti and Mikovits tomorrow to hear their plans for conducting the study. “We’re going to get through this as rapidly as we can, but make certain what we present to people is going to be complete,” Lipkin says.

Lipkin says he is convinced by work from John Coffin’s team at NCI, showing that XMRV emerged in the 1990s as a lab contaminant and is unlikely to underlie CFS (seeScience raises questions about XMRV). But he says those findings do not rule out the possibility that CFS patients are infected with related retroviruses that, for some reason, only Mikovits has been able to detect.

Lipkin came to Mikovits’ defence in her latest troubles. He says that she should be entitled to keep a copy of her laboratory records and lamented her arrest. “It’s very, very ugly and the sooner we put all this behind us the better off we’re all going to be,” he says.

Neither Mikovits nor Ruscetti could be reached for comment, but we will update this post if they get back to us.

Hat tip toCFS: A novel blog, which reported today that Mikovits and Ruscetti were looking for a site to conduct their portion of the Lipkin study.

"Plenty of people are still dying of diseases which other people do not believe." (Dr. M.N.C. Dukes).CBT and GET for ME: "There is no nonsense so gross that society will not, at some time, make a doctrine of it and defend it with every weapon of communal stupidity."

Robertson Davies

THE NICEGUIDELINES BLOG VERSUS THE NICEGUIDELINES

These are NOT the NICEGuidelines. This is "The NICEGUIDELINES BLOG." What are the differences:

The NICE Guidelines are biased publications based on the GOBSART (Good Old Boys Sitting Around a Table) approach.

This Blog however is not only evidence based but also uses critical reading to judge papers and articles. I also use common sense and listen to others. And finally I read both psychiatric and medical evidence and opinions from around the world to come to a conclusion.

I’m not sponsored by anybody or paid by whatever company as seems to be the norm with many psycho people who publish the same article almost on a weekly base.

So if you value an opinion, formed as a result of participating in many ME activities, for example being bed bound for years, you have come to the right BLOG. All these activities have allowed me to form an opinion as a Doctor and as a Patient. And that is important as the voice of the latter is discarded by many including NICE.

If you don’t read this blog, you will miss out on “accredited” medical education. If you do read it, you may actually become a doctor who doesn’t stop thinking or forgets to ask critical questions. Many good things, including satisfied patients are at your command.

So, if you arrived here for the straightforward GOBSART approach, I will disappoint you. If you are interested in forming your own opinion about ME, and other interesting things, read on!

About Dr. Speedy.

I am a Family Physician or GP as it is called in Australia or the UK. I am also an ME patient unfortunately. Bedbound that is. So at the moment I’m in private practice so to speak. I’ve got only one patient, ME, or is it me?

I graduated as a doctor a long time ago, and I am the founder and editor of The NICEGUIDELINES BLOG, an internet based ME BLOG that is devoted to critical reading and cheering you or ME up.

I have the following conflict of interest: I would like to get better and see that the wasting of public money on CBT (talk therapy for a neurological disease, really helpful) and other silly therapies for ME stops, and will be used in better ways.

My goal has always been to help, and if possible, cure patients. With this disease you will soon find out that many psychiatrists and psychologists are only in it to make money and get their name in the spotlight. And what happens to and with the patients is irrelevant.

I stand to benefit both mentally, physically and also financially if this silliness would stop, and I would get my health back, and I can go back to work and have a normal life again. Please evaluate my postings with this in mind! And remember, there are also (lots of) psychiatrists and psychologists who haven’t switched their brain off.